The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) used to report mostly bad news when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic.

NCDHHS reported the number of new cases, number of deaths and number of hospitalizations. However, on Tuesday, March 9, the department announced that it will be giving out a lot more details on the good news – that is, on the state of vaccinations in North Carolina.

 NCDHHS has expanded the information provided on its Vaccine Data Dashboard to include more demographic data on the people who are getting coronavirus vaccinations across the state.  The new web reports will break the data down by race, ethnicity, gender and age group, all by county and by week – going back to the start of the vaccinations. The information will be displayed on the “Demographics” tab on the dashboard at https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard.

North Carolina received some positive national recognition in recent weeks for the quality and detail of its COVID-19 case reports, and state officials obviously want vaccination information to be up to the same standards. Polls around the country have shown that some groups of people are more reluctant than others to be vaccinated, so the information is important in helping state officials address vaccine disparity issues.

Some recent polls have found that Democrats are more likely to get the shots than Republicans, and African Americans are less likely to get them than whites.

The users of the site will be able to see the number of the vaccines administered each week, and what percentage were given by race, ethnicity, age group and gender. The data can also be viewed by percent of people at least partially vaccinated and percent fully vaccinated. 

The state’s demographic information doesn’t currently include information on doses that have been administered in North Carolina through federal programs. Also, there can be a 72-hour lag in data reported to NCDHHS.